Our goal is to inspire people more than manage them. We trust our teams to do what they think is best for White Rabbit — giving them lots of freedom, power, and information in support of their decisions. In turn, this generates a sense of responsibility and self-discipline that drives us to do great work that benefits the company.
As a hybrid-remote organization, we want each team member to be a manager of one.
A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves
These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of handholding or supervision.
How can you spot these people? Look at their history. Have they been self-sufficient at previous jobs? Have they defined their own role before? Have they started their own site/company before? Or done their own thing in some other way? Find someone with initiative and a budding entrepreneurial spirit. And then nurture it.
You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. When you find these people, it frees up the rest of your team to work more and manage less. —excerpt from Hire managers of one, 2008, Basecamp blog
No matter what role you serve, self-leadership is an essential skill needed to be successful as a manager of one.
As the informal, smooth-running organization starts to break down, pockets of chaos emerge, and the general outcry is to “grow up” and add traditional management and HR practices and processes in place to reduce the chaos. As rules and procedures proliferate, the value system evolves into rule following (i.e. that is how you get rewarded). If this standard management approach is done well, then the company becomes very efficient at its business model — the system is dummy-proofed, and creative thinkers are told to stop questioning the status quo. This kind of organization is very specialized and well adapted to its business model. Eventually, however, the business model inevitably has to change, and most of these companies are unable to adapt e.g. Blockbuster Video.
To avoid the rigidity of over-specialization, and avoid the chaos of growth, while retaining freedom, we work to have as simple a business as we can given our growth ambitions, and to keep employee excellence rising. We work to have a company of self-disciplined people who discover and fix issues without being told to do so.
We are dedicated to increasing employee freedom to fight the python of process. Some examples of how we operate with unusual amounts of freedom are:
We do not seek to merely preserve our culture — we seek to improve it. Every person who joins us helps to shape and evolve the culture further. We find new ways to accomplish more together.
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私たちの目標は、人を「管理する」ことではなく「刺激する」ことです。White Rabbit にとって最善だと信じることを各チームが実行できるように、自由・権限・情報を惜しみなく提供しています。その結果として、責任感と自己規律が育まれ、会社にとって有益な素晴らしい仕事が生まれます。
ハイブリッド・リモート組織である私たちは、チームメンバー一人ひとりが “ワンマネージャー（manager of one）” であることを望んでいます。
ワンマネージャーとは、自分自身で目標を立て、それを実行する人です。細かい指示は必要としません。日々のチェックインも必要としません。マネージャーがするようなこと──方向性を示し、タスクを割り当て、やるべきことを決める──を、自分自身のために自分で行います。
彼らは監督からあなたを解放してくれます。自分の進む道を決め、放っておいても驚くほどの成果をあげます。手取り足取りのサポートや監視を必要としません。
こうした人材をどう見分けるのでしょうか？ これまでの職務経歴を見てください。以前の仕事で自立して働いていたか？ 自分で役割を定義したことがあるか？ サイトや会社を立ち上げた経験があるか？ あるいは何らかの形で「自分のやり方」を築いてきたか？ 主体性と起業家精神を持つ人を探し、その芽を育ててください。
何かをゼロから作り上げ、最後までやり遂げられる人が欲しいのです。そういう人を見つければ、チームの他のメンバーは「管理」に追われることなく、より多く「仕事」に集中できるようになります。
—引用：Hire managers of one, 2008, Basecamp blog
どの役割を担っていようとも、自己リーダーシップは「ワンマネージャー」として成功するために不可欠なスキルです。